WINNING MEDICAL MALPRACTICE CASES

Trial Guides has recently published a new book Winning Medical Malpractice Cases by Patrick Malone and Rick Friedman. These are, of course, the authors of the book Rules of the Road that has had an impact on how plaintiff’s present cases.

There are many helpful ideas in this book as well as transcripts from trials. An example of one idea is Rick Friedman’s approach to the subject of rules of safety in malpractice cases. Here’s an excerpt:

“At the end of this trial it will be your job to decide whether Dr Lewis was careless or even reckless when he performed his contract to provide medical services to Amy Jamieson. If you are going to be asked whether or not a truck driver or a taxi driver had been careless or reckless, you would know how to evaluate that. You know the basic rules. You know what it would mean to go 60 miles an hour in a school zone or drive at night without headlights. Well, there are rules just as basic for medical care. And almost as easy to understand. There’s a lot of medical terminology, words you’ll hear, that may be unfamiliar to you. But the basic concepts, the basic safety rules that were at issue with Dr. Lewis was performing medical services for this mother, are pretty straightforward. I think you’ll see them make a lot of sense. Here are the rules you’re going to be hearing about in this trial.”

An idea I thought helpful was that dealing with an informed consent case. It involved a chart with the title “The Meeting that Didn’t Happen” with bullet points of the things the doctor should have said to the patient, but never told the patient.

There was also the suggestion of a chart with a list of the things that the standard of care required with a box and “yes” and “no” under the heading “was it done?”